Theoretical Perspectives on Neighborhoods and Housing

Theorizing on neighborhood and housing problems overlaps heavily with theorizing on poverty, as housing insecurity and houselessness are experiences of poverty. Thus, on this page we offer more attention to neighborhoods and ask that you review the Theoretical Perspectives on Poverty and Economic Inequality page for a more comprehensive understanding of housing problems as they connect to poverty. A general overview of the classicial theoretical perspectives is presented in the Theoretical Perspectives Snapshot table below.

Theoretical Perspectives Snapshot

Theoretical perspective	Major assumptions
Structural functionalism	Neighborhoods serve important functions for society through social cohesion and integration; however, they can be dysfunctional when they are high in crime or lack social cohesion or integration. Housing insecurity serves positive functions such as necessitating employment for those working in the nonprofit sector; however, it may also be viewed as a dysfunction of social institutions to provide for all so that they may fully contribute to society.
Conflict theory	Political and economic elites use their resources to enrich their positions and to take resources from the poor and people of color. Problems such as residential segregation and housing insecurity are a result of discriminatory practices and policies that serve to perpetuate social hierarchies.
Symbolic interactionism	Residents of different neighborhoods differ in their types of interactions, perceptions of social life, and norms and values. Stereotypes of people experiencing houselessness serve to justify the harmful idea that they are not deserving of welfare or empathy, which can shape housing and welfare policy.

  

Structural Functionalism

Neighborhoods can influence our health and educational outcomes, thus from a functionalist perspective, they play an important role in society. In 1887, German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies (1887/1963) raised a question when he wrote about the changes that occurred as societies changed from small, rural, and traditional cultures to larger, urban, and industrial settings. He said that a sense of community, or Gemeinschaft, characterizes traditional societies. In these societies, family, kin, and community ties are quite strong, with people caring for each other and looking out for one another. As societies grew and industrialized and as people moved to cities, he wrote, social ties weakened and became more impersonal. Tönnies called this type of society Gesellschaft, and he was quite critical of this development. He lamented the loss in urban societies of close social bonds and of a strong sense of community, and he feared that a sense of rootlessness in these societies begins to replace the feeling of stability and steadiness characteristic of small, rural societies.

One of the key founders of sociology, scholar Émile Durkheim, was more positive than Tönnies. He certainly appreciated the social bonds and community feeling, which he called mechanical solidarity, characteristic of small, rural societies. However, he also thought that these societies stifled individual freedom and that social ties still exist in larger, urban societies. He called these latter ties organic solidarity, which he said stems from the division of labor. When there is a division of labor, he wrote, everyone has to depend on everyone else to perform their jobs. This interdependence of roles creases a solidarity that retains much of the bonding and sense of community found in small, rural societies (Durkheim, 1893/1933).

We may apply this classical theorizing to the neighborhood level. People in neighborhoods with higher levels of social integration and bonding have better outcomes. Contemporary research tends to emphasize that strong social bonds do exist, even today (Guest, Cover, Matsueda, & Kubrin 2006). Many residents live in neighborhoods where people do know each other, associate with each other, and look out for each other. In these neighborhoods, a sense of community does exist. The social bonding that exists in these communities can then protect against neighborhood and housing problems. For instance, low-income neighbors may be more likely to come together to fight against an exploitive landlord if they have high bonding and solidarity, or even against a corporation known for dumping toxic waste building a facility near their neighborhood – an issue of environmental injustice that we'll cover later in this textbook. 

As discussed in the Poverty chapter, functionalists may view poverty and the experience of housing insecurity as serving positive functions for society such as justifying the employment of those who work for nonprofits that address poverty and housing insecurity. However, functionalists may also view housing insecurity as a dysfunction of social institutions such as the state (government, law, policy) or work (availability of jobs) to provide for all so that they may fully contribute to society. Similarly, functionalism may argue that neighborhoods can be dysfunctional if they block individuals' abilities to be productive members of society such as if the neighborhood is high in crime or low in social integration.

  

Conflict Theory

Conflict theory assumes a basic conflict between society’s 'haves' and 'have-nots,' or between the economic and political elites and the poor. This type of conflict manifests itself in housing, in which the 'haves' and 'have-nots' live very different residential lives. The affluent live in neighborhoods with large expensive homes and well-funded schools (due to higher property taxes on those homes), whereas low-income people live in neighborhoods with smaller less-costly homes and poorly-funded schools.

This view attributes neighborhood and housing inequality to structural problems, including institutional and individual discrimination, a lack of opportunity in education and other spheres of life, and the absence of jobs that pay an adequate wage (Feagin 2006). Segregated neighborhoods and housing discrimination, for example, may prevent Black Americans from escaping low-income areas and from moving to areas with greater employment opportunities. Housing discrimination prevented many Black families from purchasing homes over the 1900s, which means far lower levels of intergenerational wealth, as homeownership is the primarily mechanism for growing wealth for those who are not rich. The schools that many low-income children and children of color attend are overcrowded and underfunded. As these problems continue from one generation to the next, it becomes very difficult for people already at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder to climb up.

Some recent applications of conflict theory emphasize the importance of political economy, the interaction of political and economic institutions and processes. In this way of thinking, political and economic elites (bankers, real estate investors, politicians, and others) collaborate to advance their respective interests. This development often takes the form of displacing poor urban residents from their homes so that condominiums, high-rise corporate buildings, posh shops, or other buildings favoring the rich can be built, a process we'll return to called gentrification. More generally, these elites treat neighborhoods as settings for the growth of their wealth and power, rather than as settings where real people live, go to school, work at a job, and have friends and acquaintances. Sociologists John Logan and Harvey Molotch use the term growth machine ideology to characterize the view of the city that guides these elites’ policies and practices (Logan & Molotch 2007).

Thus, problems such as racial residential segregation and housing insecurity are a result of discriminatory practices and policies at the hands of those in power. These practices and policies then reinforce existing social hierarchies, perpetuating the oppression of the poor and of people of color.

  

Symbolic Interactionism

Consistent with the overall approach of symbolic interactionism, scholars of neighborhoods who take this approach focus on the nature of residents’ interactions with each other, the reasons for their patterns of interaction, and their perceptions of various aspects of social life. Their work has yielded many rich, vivid descriptions of the urban life, for instance. Many of these accounts have concerned the lives of people in low-income neighborhoods and neighborhoods of color. The late Elliott Liebow wrote two of the most famous accounts. The first of these two was his majestic Tally’s Corner (1967), which depicted the lives of Black men who 'hung around' a particular neighborhood street corner. His second account was Tell Them Who I Am: The Lives of Homeless Women (1993), which, as its title implies, depicted the lives of houseless women.

These and other accounts depict cities or neighborhoods as places where social norms and values prevail, in contrast to views that depict them as wild, chaotic places. Building on these more positive accounts, more recent work by sociologist Elijah Anderson (2000) emphasizes that most poor urban residents are 'decent' (as they call themselves), law-abiding people who strongly disapprove of the crime and drug use in their neighborhoods. He also emphasizes that neighborhoods are filled with parks and other public settings in which people from different racial and class backgrounds gather every day and interact in various ways that help foster interracial understanding. Anderson calls these settings cosmopolitan canopies, and says they “offer a respite from the lingering tensions of urban life and an opportunity for diverse peoples to come together. … Through personal observation, they may come casually to appreciate one another’s differences and empathize with the other in a spirit of humanity” (Anderson, 2011, pp. xiv–xv). Theoretically, this many help people forge connections to those that they would not otherwise have interactions with due to racial residential segregation.

Additionally, symbolic interactionism is interested in how people understand the experience of poverty and housing insecurity. One such experience is stereotyping: Generalizing about a large group of people, often in misleading or harmful ways. Stereotypes of people in poverty or experiencing houselessness include that they are lazy, irresponsible, and living off of welfare, or that they will use any money given to them for drugs. This stereotyping serves to justify the cultural idea that people in poverty or who are houseless are not deserving of welfare or empathy. Those cultural ideas in turn may shape housing and welfare policy, such as with the racialized stereotype of the 'welfare queen' (a low-income Black mother) in the 1990s that was used to justify the overhauling of the welfare system under the Clinton administration.